The office environment has witnessed a quiet technological revolution. Personal Computers (PCs), facsimile (fax) machines, voice mail, electronic mail (e-mail), conferencing, desktop publishing and other tools have changed the workplace forever. As data and devices proliferate, tasks like organizing information, locating files, and securing enough disk space gets increasingly difficult. Users performing routine office tasks are forced to search for data objects and information associated with a given action. This often requires users to employ searching and lookup techniques, including object keywords and indexing/sorting tools. As a result of the technological revolution, connection ease and speed, bandwidth capacity, ubiquity and reliability have become new user needs.
Users within the office environment frequently need to place telephone calls while simultaneously referencing documents stored in multiple directories on the desktop. While the availability of folder objects aid in the organization of documents on the desktop, the user must still create the folder objects, update, and remember the names of the folder objects on the desktop. An example will illustrate the problems faced by users in current office environments. Imagine a user has received an electronic facsimile distribution into a Local Area Network (LAN) server, but the document has not yet been sent to the receiving fax device. The user receives the fax into an in-basket, decides to print the document, and files the document into an electronic folder. There is currently no way to associate a sequence of actions (e.g., receiving, filing, printing) with the document. Furthermore, there is no way to associate the sequence of actions with a document category such that future documents may be treated in the same manner.
Various desktop management techniques have evolved in the form of software agents to address the association of actions with objects. These software agents may be used to filter information and prioritize messages, create and distribute business forms, and make videos of screen activities for training and presentations. These software agents attempt to replicate the actions of people doing information delivery tasks. The software agents, acting on behalf of the user, execute application workflows and interact with computer applications and phone and fax resources to perform transactions typically requiring human intervention. One problem is that most software agents address only one function. Another problem is that software agents are add-ons and are not integral components. Still another problem is that setup of these agents is complex and confusing, often requiring a user to ascertain interrupts and memory addresses used by the software and hardware components. In addition, the techniques suffer from the unavailability of software with the capability to automatically report hardware and software addresses, interrupts and parameters settings; identify which parameters are set incorrectly; and produce configuration and system files.
Still other desktop management techniques have employed the concepts of user control linking (e.g., Object Linking & Embedding (OLE), Dynamic. Data Exchange (DDE)). These techniques allow the user to pass data represented by a control to other applications that are invoked via a linking program controlling linking, to integrate at execution time applications that are totally unaware of each other. The techniques permit the user to connect a person's name, department, and location to an address-book window containing information about the person. User control linking, however, is incapable of establishing links with media devices, user application actions, or attributes.
Consequently, a technique is needed that provides a procedure for managing the creation and monitoring of an arbitrary number of devices, objects, attributes or actions on a computer's desktop.